


Some Forgotten Corner of the Universe

by Black_Betty



Category: Firefly, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Firefly Verse, Alternate Universe - Space, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Past Torture, Protective Erik, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 13:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1745777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_Betty/pseuds/Black_Betty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik remembers the boy he met on Osiris. <br/>Charles is no longer that boy, but that doesn't mean Erik loves him any less...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Forgotten Corner of the Universe

**Author's Note:**

> So Ikeracity and I challenged one another to write a Serenity AU. I asked for Charles as Inara, she asked for Charles as River. This is mine--her's is still coming, and OH BOY. IT'S SO GOOD ALREADY YOU GUYS. HOT DAMN.

 

Erik remembered the boy named Charles.

The boy he met on Osiris was small for his age and a handful of years younger than any other child at school. He was too odd, too abstract, too smart and willing to flaunt his brilliance. All the other students hated him, which was fine because they hated Erik too as the charity case from the boarder planets, brutal and uncultured.

They were an odd pair of best friends, Erik at eleven, Charles at seven, but Erik loved Charles quickly and without hesitation, to used to losing things if he didn’t hang onto them and protect them with his teeth. Charles didn’t mind that Erik had no money or fine clothes, that some softhearted sap from the Core had sponsored him at school to ease their guilt of privilege. He wanted to know everything about Erik in the same way he wanted to know everything about everything to feed his boundless fascination with the entire universe, and he treated Erik like he was as extraordinary as a supernova exploding into space.

Charles had an eager and earnest sense of wonder that was magnetic, and Erik remembered sitting on his checkered bedspread with a game of Chess mapped out between them listening to Charles talk. Remembered being dazzled. Charles was special, and Erik wasn’t the only one to think so.

Better to think of Charles as he was now as a new person, a completely different person. Better, easier, than trying to force Charles to be the happy, untroubled boy on Osiris. He knew when he found Charles strapped to a surgical table in the basement of an Alliance facility that Charles would never be the same, but he refused to think of him as broken.

There were bad days, though, when it was hard to think of Charles as anything _but_ broken.

“Charles, sweetheart, put it down.”

Erik could hear the commotion from the engine room where he was up to his elbows in grease, trying to make sure the last suppression coil wouldn’t explode and send them crashing through the atmosphere when they entered orbit on Whitefall. The sound of Charles’ name lit up an ingrained response in him and he was out the door and clamoring up the gangway before he even set his tools down.

When he reached the cargo hold Raven was standing in the doorway, a silk shawl wrapped tight around her shoulders.

“What is it?” he gasped, “what’s happened?” When she turned to look at him, her face was rigid with distress, and he felt himself grow numb. He shoved past her, stumbling over the hatch door and into the open hold where the small crew had gathered.

And at the center was Charles, his eyes wide and frightened, holding one of Cain’s largest guns in his hands.

Everyone was talking at the same time, their voices layering over one another in a rising swell of noise that to Erik was distracting, and to Charles must be completely disorienting. They were cautiously closing in on him and Charles was looking frantically from face to face, confusion evident in every line of his body.

“Charles,” he called, keeping his voice low and calm though his heart was racing. His voice seemed to reach Charles amidst the din because he spun wildly, eyes searching for Erik, his hands tightening dangerously on the gun.

“Erik?”

Charles’ voice was heartbreakingly fragile, cut with tears. Erik realized he was still clutching onto his tools and slowly set them down on the floor before reaching out with his palms upturned so Charles could see there was nothing in them but grease stains.

Charles took a few quick steps toward him, and the crew panicked, Logan and Ororo moving forward with swift military precision to grab him roughly and disarm him. Erik shouted at them to stop, flinching at the sound of Charles shouting in surprise and then pain as they wrestled him to the floor. Logan gestured at Erik to stay back until Ororo had unloaded the magazine and emptied the chamber of the gun, her shoulders relaxing as she breathed a slow, audible sigh of relief.

Finally Logan let Charles go and he scrambled toward Erik, tucking himself under Erik’s chin and wrapping his arms around his ribs. He was shaking and Erik gripped him tightly, ran a soothing hand down his spine to try and calm him.

“You always keep loaded guns around children?” Logan growled at Cain who stood next to the air lock with his mouth hanging open.

“No!” he sputtered, “I swear I turned around for a second—“

“He’s not a child,” Erik said, though Charles, curled up and shivering in his arms, seemed painfully young.

“Well he might as well be,” Logan muttered, getting slowly to his feet. He pointed at Erik, “This can’t happen again, you understand me?” Erik nodded slowly and kept his mouth shut. Logan stared at him for a moment longer and then shook his head wearily.

“As if I ain’t got enough gorram problems.”

The cargo hold slowly emptied as the crew dispersed, Jean coming forward to help Erik with Charles. They got him onto his feet and walked him slowly down to the infirmary, Jean calmly explaining to Charles where he was, and where they were going. He fought them at the first sight of the sterile white lights and medical instruments as he always did, but they eventually calmed him enough to get him to lie down on the exam table.

Erik held his hand as Jean gently began to run tests on Charles’ blood pressure, and heart rate, shaking his head empathically _NO_ when she pulled out a syringe to draw blood. Charles would let them take samples if he was having a good day, or feeling particularly curious or helpful, but today was definitely not a good day, and Erik would throw himself out the airlock before he caused Charles more pain.

He watched as she recorded a series of numbers into a file and tried to bite down on the sudden overwhelming rush of frustration. They couldn’t help Charles on this ship—they didn’t have the tools or the capacity to even begin to understand what the Alliance had done to Charles the three years he was gone. But what else could they do? Where could they possibly go? And who would help them?

Charles squeezed his hand. Erik turned to look at him and his face was pale, his eyes damp but lucid and focused on Erik’s face.

“I’m sorry Erik,” he whispered, and Erik clutched his hand tighter and leaned in closer to fix him with a steady gaze.

“You have nothing to be sorry for. You did nothing wrong.”

Charles breathed in a broken sob and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Everyone was so mad and afraid. Their heads were screaming at me and I couldn’t make it stop—“

“Shhhhhhh,” Erik hushed him, and then untangled their hands. “Hey, shove over a bit.”

Charles shuffled back to the edge of the examining table and Erik climbed up next to him, lying down and wrapping his arms around Charles’ waist to pull their bodies close. Charles tucked his cold, bare feet in between Erik’s legs like he did when he was small and gripped the front of Erik’s dirty coveralls with shaking hands. Erik gently knocked their foreheads together.

“Listen to me. What is _my_ head saying?” Charles squeezed his eyes shut in concentration and then slowly, slowly he relaxed. Erik held him and kept his thoughts calm and soothing, and by the time Jean unwrapped the pressure cuff from his arm, Charles was asleep.

“Want me to help you move him?” She asked, quietly, but Erik shook his head. She nodded and turned off the light, shutting the door softly behind her as she left. Erik watched the shadows on the wall and counted each one of Charles’ inhalations until he drifted off as well.

***

He woke up disoriented. Reeling for a moment, unsure of where he was, he reached out to steady himself and realized that Charles was gone. He sat up slowly, wiping at the grit in his eyes, a blanket that had not been there when he fell asleep slipping from his shoulders to pool at his waist. It was the warm knitted one from their room, the one Shepherd Adler had made for Charles their first month aboard the _Alkali_. He rubbed the soft material between his fingers and waited for the fog of sleep to clear from his mind.

When he felt steady he climbed off the exam table and carefully gathered up the blanket in his arms. He checked their room first, and when he found it dark and empty, headed through the ship to where he knew Charles would be.

The cockpit of the _Alkali_ was smaller than most, but there was room enough for two chairs and a broad control panel, the majority of the far wall and ceiling taken up by a wall of curving glass that revealed the massive black expanse of outer space. Erik found it unnerving to be so exposed, but he knew that Charles loved it—that it was his favourite place on the ship—and so he wasn’t surprised to find him there with Hank.

Charles was leaning eagerly forward in the empty pilot seat as Hank described the purpose of each blinking light, each switch, answering Charles’ questions with a matched enthusiasm. Erik stood for a moment in the doorway observing how open and at ease Charles was, any earlier pain and tension washed away.

He stepped into the cockpit, ducking his head in deference to the low ceiling and shook out the blanket in his arms, wrapping it around Charles’ shoulders. Charles looked up at him in surprise and smiled, reaching out to curl his fingers around Erik’s wrist.

“Erik, Hank is going to teach me how to fly the ship!”

Erik looked down at Hank, who quickly looked away, busying himself with the steering column.

“He is, is he?” Charles nodded and Hank fumbled to his feet quickly, awkwardly brushing past Erik, his lanky frame nearly folded in half as he maneuvered the cramped space.

“I think I’ll get some shut eye before we reach orbit,” he mumbled, “see you later Charles…Erik.” Erik watched him go before flopping down in his vacated chair, kicking his feet up on the edge of Charles’ seat.

“He’s scared of you,” Charles said with a small smile, fingers winding around Erik’s bootstraps. Erik snorted.

“Somebody has to keep him in check, or else he’ll let you fly us into the ground.”

Charles tugged on his laces, scowling and making Erik laugh.

“That was one time!” He protested, and Erik shrugged and folded his hands behind his head.

“One time too many in my books.”

Charles pouted for a while before his attention was inevitably drawn outwards, quiet and contemplative, taking in the spiraling inky blackness of space. Erik shut his eyes and drifted, the hum of the ship and the sound of their steady breathing in the enclosed space tipping him over into a light doze.

He started awake when Charles suddenly spoke, his voice loud in the peaceful quiet of the cockpit. The ship was approaching Whitefall, the moon hanging huge and vast on the horizon, and Charles was gazing through the window at it, his expression distant, his eyes wide and mesmerized as though lost to hypnosis.

“The only planet we are sure is inhabited is a tiny speck of rock and metal,” he said, his voice muted and nearly unrecognizable, “shining feebly by reflected sunlight, and at this distance utterly lost.”

Erik felt his heart clench. Sometimes Charles said things that were far beyond his comprehension, his mind a million miles away and in pieces, pulling thoughts and ideas from thin air like strands of spider web. In those moments he seemed untouchable and absent even while sitting in the same room.

But this time, in this moment, Charles looked over at him and grinned.

“Guess who said that?” he asked, his face bright and alive and every bit the boy on Osiris who wanted to know everything and shared with Erik his entire world. Erik felt the tension in his chest ease in a rush of relief.

“I don’t know,” he replied when he could find the words, “Why don’t you tell me?”

And Charles did, his voice extending outwards in rounded vowels to fill in the distance between the stars and breathing space inside Erik’s chest, warm and familiar.


End file.
